The Calligrapher — Yán Zhēnqīng 颜真卿

Tang master of robust regular script; co-creator of the enduring 'Yan style'.

Tang calligrapher (709–784), master of regular script/running script — the Tang moral paragon whose upright, muscular regular script became the model of Chinese integrity in writing. Tang dynasty

Cultural Story

卢 once meant black — the 韩卢 was the famed hound of the lords, swift and dark. The name fixed in 卢沟桥, the Marco Polo Bridge whose stones saw the 1937 clash that opened Japan's war on China. 卢布 and 卢比 are later coins the trade routes carried in; the character traveled from a hound to a bridge to a ruble.

Common words & phrases

• 卢布 ruble
• 卢比 rupee
• 卢沟桥 Lugou Bridge

Read the story behind the character

A history film names 卢沟桥; 卢布 is the rate a traveler checks before Moscow. 卢比 buys the chai a tourist drinks in Delhi, and the surname 卢 still heads a few shop signs. The word now meets most readers at the currency converter or the war documentary, far from the black dog of the old hunters.

Why this character belongs on skin

卢 is the deep black of a pot hung over fire, the soot of the hearth that stains and stays. In the old scripts it was a vessel, and the stain of use turned it dark—so the character came to mean black itself, the color of earth, of night, of the honest grime of a life spent working. To wear 卢 is to claim the dark without fear, the way the West once feared black cloth and then learned to dress the soul in it. There is a monastic gravity in black, a refusal of the bright lie. A tattoo of 卢 is for the one who has made peace with shadow, who knows the hearth is black because it has burned. Carry it near the warmth of your body and let it mean you have been fired, and the soot is proof. The dark, worn, becomes a kind of light.